Whether Google likes it or not, there is a market for text link ad placements on websites.
For those of you who purchase these links, what information are you interested in about the page where the link will be placed?
The stats that seem to be important based on link brokers and posts in other forums are PageRank, backlinks, link location, and possibly page views. Any other suggestions?
Number of outgoing links on the linking page is a big factor. Also an obvious one is relatedness of linking page to linked page.
ADDED: just thought of another consideration. If the linking page already has an assortment of obviously bought links to sites that are completely unrelated, I'm not interested. So, any obvious signs of previous link selling are a big turn off, mostly if they are to unrelated sites.
Great ideas. Thanks for the input.Originally Posted by hooperman
What about the quality of backlinks to the page (for example if it is in DMOZ or has a link from a government site)?
Do you definitely need to see the URL before making an offer, or it is acceptable to see the actual URL after you make an offer but before actually paying?
Yes, backlinks to the linking page are important too; the better they are, the more help your link will be.
I'd prefer to see the URL first, otherwise you're just guessing with your offer. I suppose you don't have to go through with the deal if you change your mind on seeing the URL though.
What do I look for?
- relevance (how related is my site to the page it is on)
- does the page/site rank for any keywords at all (SEMRush)
- in content
- last Cache Date
- Age of site
What do most buyers look for?
- Pagerank
- outbound links on page
- Pagerank
- inbound links to domain
- Pagerank
- Age (sometimes)
- Pagerank
Are you asking from the buyer standpoint or the seller? Many brokers hide their client during the initial stages of negotiation. I always state I will have to review their site and ad before placing and before payment.Do you definitely need to see the URL before making an offer, or it is acceptable to see the actual URL after you make an offer but before actually paying?
Thanks again to both of you (and welcome dschall). I am looking at this from a buyer and seller perspective, since they are both important, but I know what I am looking for as a seller.
I guess my next question is how satisfied are you with the current channels available to buy and sell text links? 3Six and I spent some time complaining about text link brokers in a thread on here, and the only real alternative seems to be going to a forum like DP and haggling over PMs, so I am thinking about putting together something different.
I've only bought a couple of links in the past, but they were both handled by approaching the owner of the site in question.
I've only just registered with a couple of link brokers with a view to selling some links, but so far I've just been getting completely irrelevant buyers that I just reject immediately (dating links on a golf website etc).
The hardest part is finding the buyers, which is the only plus I can see from most of the current buy/sell channels. I don't want anything automated. I don't want my inventory somewhere with pricing info. I don't want to make 50% for all the risk.
DP is for the most part garbage. I have answered many WTB ads placed, but the buyers are used to paying next to nothing. Go to DP and place a WTB or WTS links post for your niche and watch the junk fly in. You will quickly see the kinds of things that you can do differently.
Does your niche have a webmaster forum? These are the types of places I would hang out at instead of DP.
Do you use google alerts? I have many set up like "want to buy niche" or "wtb niche", which has been a decent way to find sites I did not know about...actually that is how I found this place.
thinking about putting together something different.How about a pretty "due diligence" page (like flippa) with no URL or site.Do you definitely need to see the URL before making an offer
-extenstion (.com, .info, .etc)
-keywords in domain name
-yahoo backlinks
-PR
-whois reg date
-last cache date
-outbound links
Last edited by dschall; August 3rd, 2010 at 07:22 PM.
That would be very welcome. Let me know if I can help in any way.so I am thinking about putting together something different.
Some excellent posts there, dschall! I agree that DP is full of junk. Start a WTB ad there and you'll be flooded with autoblog junk, dropped domains that have been picked up before the PR got blanked, new sites, vast networks of interlinked sites which scream "link farms", and other nonsense. Dealing with the PMs is a full time job in itself, many are from half-wits and 99% of them won't read your post. Taking the time to explain exactly what you want is a complete waste, most DP dumbasses will ignore it completely and offer you unrelated sites that don't meet any of your criteria. If you don't reply to their PMs they'll keep pestering you, and if you do reply you'll find that they don't take no for an answer. Arrggh!
Good point. TLA offers a manual option where you get to approve each ad first and you've got to hard code it into your page. It's a lot of work for the 50% payment and the risk you're taking.I don't want anything automated. I don't want my inventory somewhere with pricing info. I don't want to make 50% for all the risk.
The one thing that hasn't been covered here is outgoing link relevance.
When buying a link I'd rather buy it on a low PR page that has links to the top sites in that niche and no others. I'm not fussed about how many outgoing links there are as long as they are all spot on target. I'll give an example I own: CRM Software page. The links going off site are all to companies selling CRM software. As a seller I can add links to other CRM software companies without Google suspecting they are paid links - Google has no way of knowing. If I were buying text links, that's the kind of page I'd want to buy from.
I'm not claiming that any of the outgoing links on that page are paid links
Why don't you want anything automated, and how do you propose selling a link without giving pricing info? Do you want to just list ad space for sale, and have people contact you if they are interested?
I hear you loud and clear about the 50% cut.
I agree that DP is a difficult place to work, but I think the low prices are due to the mostly low quality of ads offered.
This is exactly what I am doing. So far I can capture the URL, PR, backlinks, outbound links, and whether the URL is listed in DMOZ, and have fields where the seller can list comments (like domain keywords) and select a page category. Most of the others in your list shouldn't be too difficult to do.
Thanks for the additional suggestions.
Last edited by benitez17; August 4th, 2010 at 05:26 AM.
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